


Oh No, Not I

by anielle



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, But the others do show up eventually, Canon Divergence AU, Gen, Hurt Peter Quill, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, It's not like I could do him dirtier than vol. 2, Mainly Peter, Post Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2, and frankly?, basically a look into how Peter is feeling after the worst day anyone could ever have, deffo spoilers lie within, is probably the closest genre, since the set-up of the story is that he's on his own, super non-specific and just in chapter 1 but I don't want to trigger anyone
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-11-29 08:18:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11436876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anielle/pseuds/anielle
Summary: He’d wanted to kill Ego so bad. But his friends, frustratingly smart and pragmatic galaxy savers that they were…“Strictly speaking, we’ve got to make sure he doesn’t destroy the galaxy. Which means we’ve got to get you as far away from this planet as possible.”--- --- ---AU splitting off from Vol. 2 where instead of attempting to kill Ego, they take the defensive approach to galaxy guarding and get his power source (aka his son, aka Peter) as far out of his reach as possible. The story begins some months after that choice, and Peter is roaming the galaxy alone, lonely and pissed at his father for taking away literally every single person Peter ever considered ‘family.’





	1. No Need to Talk it Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Where are the others?” she asks.  
> God, he’s tired. Bone-deep, heart-achingly exhausted, and he can’t bring himself to say either the truth, ‘I’m all alone,’ or the lie, ‘I’m fine.’ Instead, he blinks his eyes clear – watering from all the smoke, obviously – and looks about for a subject change.

Peter channels his inner trash panda and does his best to revel in the pleasure of shooting some bad guys. Not that Peter had been one to agonize over this stuff before, taking out bad dudes doing bad was a job well done and nothing he’d lose sleep over, but he had never before felt that glee that Rocket did over cleverly dealing out those just desserts. Peter understands Rocket a lot better, these days. Rocket was – is, always is – angry. And now, Peter gets that.  
  
The two “sentries” at the end of the hall aren’t even facing his direction; they’re sharing a little handheld screen, hunched over and chuckling at whatever they’re watching. Considering the business they’re in, Peter really doesn’t want to know. He shoots them both in the back before they even realize he’s there and steps over the corpses to take a left. He’s not sure that’s the right direction; he didn’t plan or prepare to do this mission at all, but there’s something intoxicating about letting rage fuel bold strides forward and not giving a single thought to what might go wrong. It’s been only careful moves for too long.  
  
The left hand turn dead ends pretty quick. He shoots the lock and the door swings open. It's just equipment, storage. And even though he’s planning to make these guys dead enough that this is overkill, he wants to be sure no more of their product sees the light of day, ever.  
  
He’s been practicing, small stuff, with no real purpose, quickly extinguished, but definitely practicing, so it’s satisfying how easily he is able to reach into himself and summon that white-blue fire. He nestles it into the heart of the junk and prods it a bit, until it catches onto the bigger and seemingly least flammable objects in the room. He encourages it to burn until the whole place melts, then spins on his heels and right into the sights of two more guards rounding the corner. Their guns are up, alert; they must have heard his shots and come investigating. And probably found their buddies’ bodies back at the ‘T.’ Oops.  
  
He manages to dodge the first blast but takes the second on his left arm. He’s got his two shots off and two more fallen foes before the pain even registers. But register it does, and he curses, because he might be a half-god with a little ‘g’ but of course pain receptors are still part of the deal.  
  
He heads back down the hall, making a retroactive right, and boy does he ever miss his tunes. He hums a bit, trying to find that exact song that can turn this around, that will make this less of a terrible slaughter and more like a righteous crusade. Because it is, these are exceptionally bad dudes up to bad things, but he is sure he would feel that way _more _with ELO scoring the moment. But he doesn’t have his walkman anymore.__  
  
And this is what he’s talking about, understanding that fury that Rocket has bristling to bursting through his furry body 24/7. Up until this point, Peter’s devil-may-care attitude had, granted, gotten him into a few scrapes, but more importantly, gotten him out again with a smile on his face and a dance move tapping his feet. But he’s gained the galaxy’s shittiest father and lost his walkman, so dancing has become a lot harder.  
  
He arrives at another ‘T.’ This dingy spaceship’s a lot twister on the insider than it looked on the outside, docked in the seedy side of Oros’ already seediest port city. Peter stops his humming – it wasn’t helping anyway – and really listens. He’s absolutely running low on the element of surprise, so he needs to make smart choices now. From the left, the rumblings of a posse coming to fight an intruder. On the right, a quiet, active stillness. He’s not sure how smart these criminals are, but instinct says they wouldn’t need to come find him if the cargo they were protecting lay behind them. He turns right.  
  
This route closes quickly, too, in a larger room that’s mainly open space, with crates of provisions and fuel pods strewn about haphazardly. There’s a door with a green-glowing high tech lock on the wall opposite him, and it makes his heart do a painful little flip-flop, because it confirms he’s in the right place, but it’s also probably not something he has the skill set to crack. If only he was still with the Guardians…  
  
One step forward and he has new priorities. The guard in here got the jump on him, literally, with the old hide-beside-the-doorway trick, springing out and smashing the butt of her blaster between Peter’s shoulder blades. Much too close to where he got shot, and his left arm hangs limp as pain radiates all through it. He snarls, lashing out from the ground with a kick that takes the woman down to his level. It’s then that he gets a good look at her, and oh man, she has freaking pinschers protruding from her orange face – but also a keystick dangling from her belt. And look at that, he’s found something to smile about after all.  
  
She’s climbing to her feet when he slams a booted foot into those pinschers as hard as he can, buying him the time to blast her away. And then help himself to that keystick.  
  
One of his arms is still just refusing to show up to work, so he has to holster his blaster to jam the keystick in the lock. Three little lights on the side flash red and he’s worried for a second that it’s a sign it won’t work, but thankfully red for wrong is not a universal truth, and the door clicks open.  
  
It isn’t much more than a closet, but they’ve fit five kids in there. Not a one older than 14. Two Kree boys, a girl with diamond skin, one that’s furry and striped, and a Xandarian girl who looks up at him with dawning wonder.  
  
“It’s Star-Lord,” she breathes. “It’s okay!” The others begin to relax from the unison flinch they’d made at the opening of the door. “He’ll save us,” she tells them.  
  
“Damn straight,” he says, and there isn’t time to dwell on it now, but he’s going to remember this swell of pride for the rest of his life.  
  
The keystick lights two green squares when he unlocks the closest boy, but the manacles open and thank God it’s a master key. Peter knows from experience how sore the kids’ arms must be, and he hates to ask, but with no backup, he’s going to need the kids to work for it. “Unlock the rest,” he says, handing the keystick to the boy. “There’s more coming, I’ve got to—” He hears the thumping of feet getting close and instinctively ducks sideways, narrowly missing the blast whizzing past his head. It gets the diamond girl in the side, though, and Peter’s vision almost whites out.  
  
He fires three blasts behind him without even looking, knowing that he’s guided them to hit their targets. He keeps his focus on the girl - drops to his knees, puts his hands up, and inches towards her. “I want to help. Can I help?” he asks, gesturing toward her wound but keeping his distance until he gets permission.  
  
She’s crying, body curled as much as it can be with her arms chained up around her side. “It hurts,” she sobs.  
  
Of course it does, he thinks, furious at himself for letting this child get hurt even more by these bastards. “Let me try to help,” he pleads.  
  
Trying to stop her lip from quivering, she nods.  
  
He really doesn’t know what to do – doesn’t even know what species she is – but he puts his hands out, closes his eyes, and draws on that flame at his core, trusting that he can mold it into something soothing, something healing.  
  
And he does, he thinks. When he opens his eyes, the bleeding has stopped and the girl is blinking away her tears. “Are you okay?” he can’t help asking, even though it’s absurd and of course she isn’t. Before she can answer, blaster fire rings out next to Peter’s ear and he spins around.  
  
The tiger-striped kid lowers Peter’s blaster, dark brown smudges – tears – staining down their face. The thug they shot tumbles to the ground with a steaming hole in his chest and the kid begins to tremble uncontrollably.  
  
“Hey, hey,” Peter tells them. “You did good. You did really good. Now let me—” He gestures for his blaster. The kid gives it to him wordlessly, staring down at their hand in horror. “You did good,” Peter repeats firmly, then tells the room full of newly freed kids, “You’re going to be okay.”

____

\--- --- --- 

Thank God there’s a Nova outpost here – Peter is distantly horrified with himself for not thinking to check if they were stationed anywhere on the planet before rushing in – and he’s able to turn the kids over to them. He didn’t even have to go find them; by the time he got the kids and the only surviving crew member off of the ship, the whole craft was melting in white hot flames and even in a sketchy place like this, that was enough to get the space cops’ attention.  
  
While the pair of them are checking out the kids and radioing in for backup, Peter leans in real close to the scaly criminal. “You cooperate with them, give them anything and everything they want to know, or—” and he raises his right palm, makes it glow with light, “I will cause you pain in ways you can’t even imagine.” It’s all bluster, it’s not like Peter will know, and he’s certainly never delved into the torturing abilities his celestial genes might grant him, but it works on the guy who just watched his entire crew and ship get obliterated by one man with a glowy hand. Dude’s nodding so fast his pointy head might fall off. “Awesome!” Peter smiles as brightly as he can and turns away, hopefully to never see or think on this man again.  
  
He heads over to where Corpsman Riect is calling in the reinforcements. “…doesn’t seem to be burning anything but the spacecraft, but it really should be contained,” she tries to explain over her radio.  
  
“It’ll be fine,” Peter tells her in a quiet voice. “Won’t catch anything else, and it’ll die out once that thing’s melted down.”  
  
She’s only half-listening to him, responding, “Yes, sir,” a few times to her superior officer and seeming not terribly convinced by Peter’s smiling assurances. It’s not until she clicks off the radio on her shoulder that she turns her full attention his way.  
  
“I got to get going,” he says. “Thanks for taking care of the kids.” When she just stares at him, he adds, “and everything.”  
  
“You can’t just leave,” she says, finally.  
  
“I have to.”  
  
“You—”  
  
“Was never here,” he tells her, shaking his head. “Not here. Not _here _here, not on the planet here. No one can know.”__  
  
She bites her lip, hesitating. “Star-Lord—”  
  
That gets a smile, but still— “Never here. Seriously. Safety of the galaxy stuff. No one can know.”  
  
She sighs, a real heavy sigh, casting her gaze between him, the huddle of children with her partner, and the steadily disintegrating spaceship. He gets it. Not that he’s ever held a job as protocol-bound as Nova, or, if you wanted to get technical about it, anything that was strictly speaking, a job, but he’s been made to answer for some pretty inexplicable stuff, and this scene? Hard to explain.  
  
One of the four wings breaks off from the whole, sending up sparks as it crashes to the dockyard’s ground in an impressive cacophony of rending metal and grinding stone.  
  
So, yeah. He understands that he’s handing Corpsman Riect a very long day. But the adrenaline is wearing off and the throbbing in his left arm is growing deeper and spreading up from his shoulder to his chest and his neck and his head and basically, he’s already had a long day.  
  
He doesn’t think she’ll hold it against him. She’s eyeing the way he’s clutching his elbow with a concern that makes him shift awkwardly, which jostles it and makes him wince in a way that does not do any favors for his Star-Lord persona.  
  
“Where are the others?” she asks. “The Guardians?”  
  
He’s already shaking his head, saying, “Not around,” as she continues, “Is there anybody to help you – your injury?”  
  
God, he’s tired. Bone-deep, heart-achingly exhausted, and he can’t bring himself to say either the truth, ‘I’m all alone,’ or the lie, ‘I’m fine.’ Instead, he blinks his eyes clear – watering from all the smoke, obviously – and looks about for a subject change. “The kids. You’ll be able to get them back to their moms?” He amends, “Their families?”  
  
“We’ll take care of them,” Riect promises, her eyes bright, too. Because of the flaming spaceship, of course. Which – shit.  
  
“It’s going to hit fuel pods, at some point, I don’t know what it’ll do. We should move—”  
  
They spring into action, hustle everyone further away minutes before a spout of flame whooshes straight into the sky and burns like that, a pillar reaching at least 40 feet up, for long enough that Riect’s worried and Peter is giddily proud of himself. If Gamora was here, she’d be rolling her eyes at him, and that’s enough to wipe the inappropriate grin off his face. And to remind him: it’s time to leave.  
  
He slinks away, hunching his shoulders against the scraping stares of the kids he saved, who don’t deserve to have anyone let them down again, but he just leaves, because he has to. Even making glowy ‘I’m watching you’ fingers at the thug and watching him shudder with fear isn’t enough to cheer Peter up.  
  
He walks back to his shitty room, each step a little slower, a little heavier, than the last. It isn’t all that far a walk, which is good in the sense that he is able to outpace the rapidly snowballing tiredness and make it behind a locked door and onto a bed before he passes out, but also very not great when considering the locale. Originally built as a motel, the building where he now lives had become a brothel years ago, because this city is the cesspool of the planet. Since Peter isn’t paying for company, it’s a cheap room, but cheap cuts both ways.  
  
The main room can barely fit a tiny nightstand table beside the thin mattress, the bathroom is crammed into a closet of a space even smaller than what he had on the Milano, but the real kicker is the sense that everything – of course the green bed, but also the crunchy shag carpeting and vinyl, tan patterned walls – is completely coated in decades of strangers’ crusty jizz. The shower is just god-awful, presumably because most folks usually focus on a different piece of furniture in their average 30-minute stay.  
  
He really should make the effort and clean off the sweat and grime, but his disgusting, dingy bed is actually looking really good right now. It’s a struggle not to immediately faceplant onto the mattress, but the grime factor is compelling. He doesn’t want to carry a trace of those bastards for one second longer.  
  
Taking his duster and shirt off is a chore, maneuvering around an arm thats current sole function was causing extreme pain when it moved, so, basically, it’s worse than good for nothing. If the Star-Lord hero exterior only ran more than face-mask-deep, he would probably know how to use those celestial genes to fix this and wouldn’t be pouting at himself in a mirror like a child. But part of him thinks he’s used too much of that power tonight, anyway. He feels wrung out, drained dry down to his soul, not unlike when dear old dad had struck a spear of searing light through his chest. Great, and now he was getting phantom twinges behind his sternum. It still felt unreal, that there wasn’t a massive sunburst of a scar there, that there was no evidence that that torture had ever even happened. Of course, the actual stabbing hadn’t been the most painful part of that day.  
  
He’d wanted to kill Ego so bad. He’d been angling the ship down, to reach the planet’s center and destroy the father who’d killed Peter’s mother. But his friends, frustratingly smart and pragmatic galaxy savers that they were…  
  
“Wait, he needs you to power it?” Rocket had asked.  
  
“To destroy the galaxy, yeah. We’ve got to kill him,” Peter said.  
  
“Well,” and Rocket exchanged glances with Gamora, and Peter felt a sinking sensation that didn’t have anything to do with the way the spacecraft was divebombing, “Strictly speaking, we’ve got to make sure he doesn’t destroy the galaxy. Which means we’ve got to get you as far away from this planet as possible.”  
  
‘He killed my mom.’ ‘He squished my walkman.’ Excuses rose up like bile, but just as quickly, so did the inarguable knowledge that they were, simply, excuses. Walkman vengeance weighed against the fate of the galaxy? He couldn’t hold back a frustrated roar as he yanked the ship back up, nose pointing their way out of Ego’s atmosphere.  
  
He radioed Kraglin, told him to be ready to get the hell out of dodge, and didn’t bother explaining what that meant to Drax. Once they’d made it a couple frantic, random jumps away, Peter had stormed off and hid out among the compression coils like a bratty teenager. He was sure Yondu – because Yondu was there for some reason? – was rolling his eyes and telling everyone embarrassing stories of all the times Peter had spent sulking in his youth, but on the current list of things he gave a shit about? Not even top ten.  
  
Sitting there, knees bunched up tightly to his chest in the engine room, Peter had done his best to hold back the tears swimming in his eyes. He’d thought then that this was the worst it could get. He could almost laugh now at how wrong he’d been.  
  
His past naïveté, the part where he now has to roam the galaxy friendless and alone because his father managed to take literally every person Peter ever considered ‘family’ away from him, and the abysmally underpowered water pressure in this goddamned mildew-y shower. The three funniest jokes he knows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from 'Rainy Days and Mondays' performed by The Carpenters.
> 
> I'm posting this when probably I should hold off (I have more written but it needs some editing and my muse seems to be slowly backing away from me, which is just rude), but I'm excited to share and hopefully positive responses can bring that muse back (classic fanfic mistake, but, eh). I never thought I'd be writing Marvel movie fic, but there was just so much good good stuff in that movie and here we are!


	2. Can Barely Stand on my Feet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a split second delay, where his brain is taking in the fact that he’s here, Ego’s here. It’s only a second while he’s a deer in headlights before his feet spring into action and he’s turning on his heels and fleeing.  
> He’s more terrified than he’s maybe ever been, because in one afternoon, Ego ripped away every single thing Peter cared about and, maybe even worse, he’d stuck his fingers to Peter’s head and managed to make Peter believe that was okay.  
> “I’m your father, Peter. Did you really think you could run away from me?”

The trouble with sleeping in a brothel is that ‘sleeping’ is not precisely what the neighbors are up to. Peter’s pretty sure he got a few hours completely dead to the world, but after that, intermittent wall-banging and screams of pleasure kept yanking his drifting mind back to brush up against consciousness.

It’s possible that living surrounded by debauchery wouldn’t be so frustrating if he partook in some base desires himself, but Peter can’t bring himself to be as interested in that these days. Gamora has somehow made an honest man of him, but without ever going so far as to admit that they even have an unspoken connection. It’s all unrequited schmoopy mopey love eyes from Peter and there doesn’t seem to be anything he can do about it. Even now, separated from her by months and harsh words and who knows how many planets, having sex with anyone else just…doesn’t feel right. Not like he feels that she’s expecting it of him or anything, it’s more that he’s gone down that path and found it severely lacking.

Right on the heels of their big blowout fight, when Peter was newly on his own and freshly furious, he’d met Leisi, a bubblegum hot T’saari, and they hit it off in a bar and, later, outside of it. ‘Bubblegum’ was the right descriptor, because her skin was a bright pink and her personality candy-sweet, and she was fun and cute and talented at certain crafts that Peter appreciated, but ‘appreciate’ was about as far as he could go. There was no deeper connection, and the wistful hollow of his smile meant that, apparently, that was a problem for him now. He’d pulled an Elvin Bishop and was destined for a lifetime of pining. On the bright side, depending on what Ego would do when (and the dude was a god, this was a ‘when,’ not an ‘if’) he found his wayward son, Peter’s lifetime might not last that much longer.

Which, frankly, might be a mercy, Peter realizes when he attempts and fails miserably to get out of bed. His left shoulder is so tight he can barely move that side of his body. He spends what sounds like the entirety of his upstairs neighbors’ lease psyching up to try moving again. At least moans (although, granted, usually made for different reasons) aren’t out of place around here. 

He does make it up, eventually, swings his legs over the side of the mattress because he has to. He has to get moving, get out of town, or rather, out of this quadrant. Last night had been overwhelmingly satisfying, bruises and the whirlpool of tension behind his shoulder notwithstanding, but it was a neon sign flashing to the universe, ‘Peter Quill is here, come and get him!’ Time to head over to the docks, find a ship to hitch on. Even if the pickins are slim, it’s not like he has any specific destination in mind, and in a port city like this, you can always find someone going somewhere.

And going somewhere is paramount. Apparently, he was knocked out for much longer than he thought; according to the universal clock ticking away on the wall, he’s been resting for almost a full day. Luckily, he doesn’t need to spend much time packing the single duffle that holds every one of his possessions, so it’s only minutes after getting up that he’s saying goodbye to the room that was his home for the past week and a half. He flips the switch on the wall that ends his rental and drops the keycard into the slot on his way out the door. 

He would say his room exited onto an alleyway, but in this part of town, every road is basically an alleyway, so that doesn’t mean much. For a planet where it doesn’t rain, there’s a lot of ‘mud’ caked in the ‘street’ that it’s best not to think too much about. He’s heading south, to the slightly cleaner, slightly street-ier street when he hears it. The voice that’s been dogging his nightmares so often that, at first, Peter thinks maybe he’s asleep and just dreaming it: “…kind of a messy, scrappy kid, yes. That’s my son, Peter.”

There’s a split second delay, where his brain is taking in the fact that he’s here, Ego’s here, being led by that no-good dirty scoundrel of a desk clerk right to Peter’s room, about to turn the corner and see him any moment now - it’s only a second while he’s a deer in headlights before his feet spring into action and he’s turning on his heels and fleeing.

It’s too close and too soon and his feet just won’t carry him fast enough through the sucking mud. He knows barreling away in a full-on sprint is far from inconspicuous, but then there isn’t time, he just needs to get away—

“Peter!” Ego calls, and Peter’s heart sinks. He doesn’t turn to look; he funnels everything he has into stretching each stride further. It doesn’t work, of course. How can you outrun a god? An arrow of white hot light pierces his calf, makes him stumble. Then it – Ego – makes him fall, face-first, by yanking on the thing, which is evidently not just a magical burning arrow lodged in his leg, but one with a cord attached for ease of retrieval. Ego pulls on it, steadily, dragging Peter slowly through the muck as he struggles to find something to hang onto. Oh, yeah, and it hurts as much as it sounds like it does. Once Peter gains control over his yelling, he hears Ego saying, “I’m your father, Peter. Did you really think you could run away from me?”

Peter quits scrabbling at the ground. It’s not helping, it hurts, and he can only imagine how stupid it makes him look. He just lets Ego reel him in, like a fish on a hook. Fishing, that’s father-son bonding stuff, right? A hysterical laugh bubbles up, but he cuts it off, instead saying, “I did pretty good for about 30 years. Or was that you giving me a head start?” He’s nearly at Ego’s feet now and his heart is pounding like it’s trying to burst through his chest and lead him to safety. Every piece of him is quivering to get away, but he can’t let a nervous, jittery trigger finger spring too early, so he clenches his hand in slow throbs, counting down until the right moment…

“Or I guess you just didn’t care enough to try and find me until you had proof that I was special,” Peter snarls, because Ego’s only a couple feet away. He powers through the pain and swings his arm (his left arm, ouch ouch _ouch_ ) around to snip the connection, his fingers snapping the light right before he kicks on his jet boots. They blast Ego back and Peter forward, although in what was is, unfortunately, an awkward position for flight. He slams into the mud a few times before he levels out a few feet above the ground, but his body is still primarily horizontally oriented so he almost doesn’t see the looming wall in time. He pivots at the last second. Clipping the building knocks him off balance and he tumbles to the ground, but he’s got a little distance now so he scrambles up, because vertical is nice, and just _runs_. 

He wishes that his cocky replies were an indication of a heroic, tough-as-nails outlook, that the fuel that kept him on his feet wasn’t deep, primal fear. But it is. He’s more terrified than he’s maybe ever been, because in one afternoon, Ego ripped away every single thing Peter cared about and, maybe even worse, he’d stuck his fingers to Peter’s head and managed to make Peter believe that was okay. So, yeah, his legs are shaky from more than just adrenaline. And a puncture wound.

Speaking of… He whips around another corner, paying no mind to where he’s going as long as it’s away. He makes himself stop, pressed against the cold corrugated metal wall as though that’ll help hide him, and peers down at his leg. The point of light is still lodged in the muscle like a burr. That’s not good. There’s no visible string tracing his way, but Peter’d bet the Power Gem that Ego can track it. He digs his fingers into the wound, trying to pull the thing out, but it’s somehow both barbed in and also, well, light and not really a physical object to be maneuvered.

Peter lets his head slam back onto the wall, hoping the shock of it will help clear his brain. There’s two choices here, and he doesn’t have long to make them. One – he can probably focus up and get that shard out and manage to get lost again, but that might be showing his hand. It’d only be prolonging the inevitable, and when Ego does catch him for good, Peter would prefer that his increasing control over the light function as a trick up his sleeve. Two – well, two sucks. Two is Ego catching him, for good, right now. He’s not sure he’s bought enough time yet, and, ideally, Peter would never set foot on that goddamned planet again. The only thing he knows for certain is that he really doesn’t have time to waste on deciding.

He’s right about that. He pushes himself off the wall, unsure if his goal is to lean down and de-shrapnel or just to keep pounding the pavement, but it doesn’t matter because a wave of force slams into him, sending him careening into a dumpster. Space alien trash? Just as gross as Terran. Peter staggers upright, leaning on the dumpster for support as his head spins, because it’s not a cartoon imprint of his face or anything, but his impact did leave a noticeable dent in the thing.

Ego is on him already. Before his disorientation has passed, Ego smacks him (yes, _smacks_ , like Peter is nothing more than a misbehaving child) across the face, ranting, “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused me?”

“Hasn’t been all sunshine for me either, Pops,” Peter says over the ringing in his ears. “But just remember – it can always get worse.” Then he kicks up as hard as he can into the man’s groin. Thank you, Drax, for confirming that particular weak spot. 

Ego keels over the family jewels and Peter shoves him aside, pushing out into the center of the alley so he’s no longer pinned between an angry god and a dumpster. There’s a punch line in there somewhere.

He scans the alleyway, trying to find anything he can use, because he’s running out of ideas for potshots, but it’s just a string of dumpsters lining the one side and more trash on the other, strewn about across the ground. The few people that pass on the cross street are keeping their heads down and eyes averted, because in this awful city, shady is the norm, so that’s no help. Which is a good thing, really; he doesn’t need other people getting tangled up in this and hurt. He must be rusty from so long living with a team backing him, to be wishing civilians into the mix. 

So this is it, then. Just got to take a stand for as long as he can.

It’s not long. Maybe two seconds? And Ego, the god, has regained his composure and digs talon-like fingers into Peter’s left shoulder (dick move) and flips his son into the wall. Involuntarily, Peter cries out, “God!” at the screaming from his arm. Ego smirks and says, “Small ‘g,’” because he’s a dick, and then powers up a punch with blue fire before smashing it into Peter’s face. A couple of times. Because he’s an asshole.

But a real asshole. In the not-affectionate use of the term. He used to use it that way, a term of endearment for the best friends he could never imagine he would have. He misses that. He misses them. Blearily he realizes he should probably be doing something besides a trip down maudlin memory lane, but all the punching is pushing his brain out of his skull and connecting thought to motion is problematic.

He gets as far as tensing his knees to try and gain some leverage, but Ego can tell what he’s trying and lifts him by the face – just one hand, grasping Peter’s face, which both hurts and humiliates – and tosses him farther down the alley.

“Dick!” Peter complains, out loud this time.

Ego shakes his head and tuts, “We really need to clean up your language.” Peter’s hysterical laughter is back, because it’s such a ridiculous, _dad_ thing to say and he’s not sure if that’s on purpose. The laughs are out loud, too, and they seem to really piss Ego off, which makes him laugh even harder. Just an intergalactic hero, crumpled in a heap on top of garbage and vomit and other waste he probably shouldn’t get too specific about, taking blow after supernaturally charged blow from his deadbeat god of a father, laughing his fucking ass off.

Ego lands a particularly solid kick to Peter’s stomach, and for the seconds he is completely without air, his brain takes a vacation.

“Look, I know I’m the only certifiable genius on this ship, but this one isn’t hard,” Rocket is saying. Did say, rather, months ago, when they’d gotten far enough away from Ego to stop their frantic running and sit down to talk through their options. It had been the start of one of Peter’s top five worst conversations. It seems doubly unfair, that the flashbacks taking him out of the thorough beatdown his father is administering are forcing him to relive bad times. Reality or hallucinations, Peter just can’t win.

In a move as unoriginal as it is painful, Ego tosses Peter down the alleyway, and Rocket continues (continued), “The light, or whatever…you’ve got that in you, Quill. If what you added came from the planet, he wouldn’t need you. That’s basic math. You add something. You add you.” This part of the discussion, admittedly, hadn’t been so bad. It almost seemed like Rocket was being sweet, in a treacle-y after-school-special kind of way, until it became clear that it was set up for what would place in Peter’s top three list of worst plans ever. So ranked because it had landed him in this shitty spot, with Ego grasping him by the throat and banging his head into the wall, and because Peter didn’t even know most of it.

“Don’t get all huffy about this, Quill,” Rocket had said. He ignored Peter’s muttered, “Always a promising start,” and finished, “…but if he can get all mind controlling on you, you shouldn’t know the plan.”

“And you shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near him if he can use you to gain strength,” Gamora added. Peter would like to be able to report that he took this, and the rest of the conversation, as impersonal strategizing, but he knows he shot her a wounded look at that, like a puppy shocked at its master for bopping it on the nose. Not a great comparison, or a great plan, as it turns out, because Ego and his fists are about as near as it is possible to be without being _inside_ , and honestly? A few more minutes of this ‘Peter-as-punching-bag’ and his father’s blows might manage to bust through Peter’s chest and party all up behind his ribcage.

And yet, it’s not the worst his chest has ever felt. That puppy dog stuff, which amounts to essentially nothing more physically taxing than looking at a person, that’s the pain that cuts deepest. Peter thought he was having a heart attack the first time he’d felt it, but no, apparently love literally hurts. It was like a vise was wringing out his chest when he’d had to stand there in front of everyone and explain how Ego knew about Peter’s excessively unrequited feelings for Gamora and could use them to his advantage if the group stayed together. He’d known how pathetic it was, tried to avert his gaze so he wouldn’t have to see her awkwardness as he aired out their unspoken something. All of his something, anyway; he really could not stress enough how comically one-sided all the pining was. But they were planning and it was, unfortunately, relevant information, that somehow blossomed into the core concept that Peter needed to separate himself from the whole group to minimize any target on their backs. Which was why, nearly five months ago now, the Guardians staged a big breakup fight and Peter began his solo journey across the galaxy, with no way to contact his friends and only the barest understanding of a plan – keep away from his father.

A great idea, really, that, as Ego repeatedly kicks Peter in the head (punctuation to berating him for being an ungrateful son of a bitch), Peter wishes he’d been better at achieving.

It was his one and only job, playing keep away. Not even a difficult job, not in comparison to discovering a way to, like, murder a planet, but even so, Peter hadn’t been able to handle it. So. Time for plan B, which isn’t even 8% of one, but it’s all he’s got left.

It’s basically the same plan he’s used his whole life – talk. He talks, tries to get them to talk… talking is better for his health than being killed. Not rocket science, although Rocket had been known to make use of the strategy himself. The exotic new flavor spicing up this iteration, however, was shaping all the talking so that Ego didn’t immediately poker him and jumpstart universal armageddon. It was talking in such a way as to suggest that Peter could be warming to the idea of being a partner in destruction. ‘Don’t make me a battery, I want to kill everything with you if only you give me some time to learn how (it won’t take long, just until right after my friends murder you).’ That kind of thing. It’s difficult to employ in this case for two reasons: 1) Since Peter usually falls back on this strategy for nothing more intricate than distraction, this is a tough new needle to thread, and 2) Peter abso-fucking-definitely hates Ego with a fiery passion that’s hard to smother into a convincing heel-face-turn into sycophantry. 

That’s what he told the group, that his go-to plan B was an impossibility due to too awful of a mark, that he may dabble in con-manning, but this was impossible, and, yeah, it had made him sound like a tantruming toddler, so he’d probably deserved Yondu snapping at him, “Boy, you know how to do this! I taught you my own self: find yourself a truth.” It sucks. Yondu was right, but it sucks.

Peter’s hands are wrapped around his head, his body curled in the fetal position that is the last line of defense for the truly helpless. He doesn’t think he can hang onto consciousness much longer, and honestly, it would be a relief to just let go. He lets his big mouth run off one more time, miserably groaning, “Please, dad!”

Another blow lands, momentum carrying it through Peter’s words, but then there is a pause in the violence. Peter’s glad for the arms covering his face, because he can’t stop a soft smile as his brain finally spins away for good. Yondu would be proud. He has caught his mark. Peter hates it, and basically everything that is happening at the moment, but it's nice to know that he is a goddamn professional.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from 'Somebody to Love' by Queen.
> 
> (Thank you guys for all the reviews/kudos/subscriptions! The response has been super nice; you guys are lovely and inspiring to write for!)


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